Remember when it was discovered that directions from Google maps suggests kayaks and jet skis for crossing large bodies of water? Well I do. And if you don't here's an example:

Charming, right? Now, if I may be so bold, I'd say the engineers behind this feature missed an opportunity. Witness the disappointing results when I ask for walking directions from Mount Katahdin, ME to Springer Mountain, GA:

Everyone knows the best way to get from A to B on foot is the Appalachian Trail! There's even a ripe pun for the picking. The advisory circled in the image could (should) read "This route includes a Harpers Ferry."

Anybody? Anybody?

This is kind of old news, but I thought I should follow up on it. Edward Vielmetti put up a nice slideshow of a diver suiting up and taking the plunge. Reports say they yanked out concrete blocks, some shopping carts and a motorcycle from one of the intakes. A second intake is clogged and will remain so until spring, but it appears the zebra mussels have been vindicated for the time being.

I'd also like to point out that his latest article uses a hydrograph identical to the one I generated for my last post. This is an improvement from his original article on Jan 26th, which was similar to the one in the HRWC article I linked to. I'd like to believe he took the cue from me, but I' doubt it. In any case, I'm always happy to see science get communicated properly.

Edward Vielmetti has been following the recent erratic behavior of Argo Dam the last week or so. The Huron River Watershed Council, among other groups, has been advocating for removing the dam to help save the City money and improve the river's ecology. I think the plan makes a good deal of sense, but recently took a blow when city council voted 10-1 to approve a 3.1 million dollar project to repair the dam and construct a whitewater headrace. I suspect this decision was probably meant to appease the owners of expensive property that borders Argo Pond - the removal of the dam would cause Argo Pond to recede and give the property owners a nice fertile valley in lieu of waterside property. But that's just a hunch.

In any case, the HRWC posted an article about the recent malfunctions and their effect on the river ecology. The article included a nifty hydrograph (a graph of the river's flowrate) from the USGS, reproduced below.

But unless you're used to looking at hydrographs, it's hard to tell that this is absolutely nutty. So here's another plot over a longer time frame that gives you a better idea of what this looks like in the context of more 'normal' behavior. Presto:

Vielmetti's latest article says that the zebra mussel, the archetypal invasive species, is suspected for the malfunctions. Makes you wonder when decision makers will start listening to the recommendations of environmental scientists.

In the "Give & Take" post, I went into a small part of the importance of diamou, or tribal names, in Mali. I would often get asked if/how many diamous are in America, and I always struggled with the answer. There are of course the Native American tribes, but I don't think there is the same kind of joking relationships that Malian tribes enjoy, and lumping all the anglos together doesn't do justice to the variety therein. Last names, on the other hand, seem too numerous to really create the same kind of team mentality that seems to be inherent to the diamou.

I don't know if this map will totally answer the question, but it goes a long way. It's a geographical tag cloud of last names, color-coded by ethnic origin. Pretty cool.

I was horrified by the terrible crimes reported by ABC News last week. What happened to those women is a tragedy and they are incredibly brave for sharing their stories. I am troubled, too, by the apparently apathetic and negligent treatment of the incident by the Peace Corps staff in the countries concerned. While the official statement addresses some of these concerns, I'll be looking forward to further action in response to those allegations.

In the meantime, I've gathered from various comment threads and personal conversations that the general reaction to these reports includes a tendency to presume that Peace Corps service inherently carries greater risk for sexual assault and rape relative to life here in the United States. I don't believe this is the case.

According to the ABC report, there have been about 1,000 cases of sexual assault and rape reported by Peace Corps volunteers over the last decade. About 3,500-4,000 Peace Corps trainees go abroad every year. For the sake of argument, let's make the conservative assumption that only half of these 3,500 trainees are women. (In reality, 60% all volunteers are women - most, but not all of which are recent college graduates.) 1,000 incidents over a ten year period among 17,500 women over comes to a 5.7% rate of incidence. Compare this to the United States, where up to 25% of college age women report surviving rape or attempted rape since their 14th birthday. (14-22 is only 8 years, but it's been a while since I took stats, so I'm not sure how to correct for this. Regardless, the absolutely correct value would never approach 5.7%.) I've been told that the statistics for murder and assault are similarly lopsided.

So let us not confuse the issue. As I said, the reported unresponsiveness and victim-blaming of the local staff is of great concern and deserves scrutiny. But there is nothing inherently unsafe about being abroad or working as a Peace Corps volunteer. The same terrible things can and do happen here, and it's just as tragic.

"'Cus even in Madagascar,

we'll find some shack below radar"

-Gogol Bordello

Back when things were beginning to turn sour in Madagascar, I remember being frustrated when Google news couldn't feed my information addiction regarding the pending coup. English-language articles that came up from a search of 'Madagascar' were mostly about the release of 'Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.' Though this would soon be hilariously ironic, I couldn't figure out why this was more news-worthy than a tempest of cyclones, looting and massacres. I still don't know why it didn't get covered as extensively as it might have, but I've been looking at Google trends, and it seems to validate that it was bad coverage, and not my information withdrawal, that sent me into such anxious fits at the internet cafe.

Here's the first plot, showing web traffic and news reports for Madagascar since 2004, to give you an idea of how coverage of the movies compares to the coup.

The first thing to notice is the relative size of the peaks in overall traffic, at 'A' and 'B,' to the average level of traffic and subsequent coup traffic. The next thing is that the news coverage, shown on the bottom line, was fairly responsible -- small peaks for the movies relative to the coup. Also notice that peak A is quite wide -- beginning around the 'Madagascar' release on May 27, 2005 and taking until mid-2006 to return to a normal traffic level. It also has a secondary peak corresponding to the DVD release on November 15, 2005. Since the release of the second film overlapped with the period of turmoil, we'll just have to assume that the traffic peak for the second movie at 'B' has similar traits. This means that when we look at traffic for 2009, the high baseline at the beginning of the year is mostly residual activity from the movie release on November 7, 2008.

Here we see some stranger behavior from the news publishers. There's a small hiccup in late January, when the looting and shootings took place. The greatest news activity only happened when the president peacefully stepped down on March 17.

So far, we've seen that web users care more about movies than Malagasy murders, regardless of how much noise the news makes. We also might hypothesize that the internet-based media mailed this one in. It missed all the real action and mostly covered an event that was pretty much a forgone conclusion in the minds of anyone paying attention. But is this true everywhere? How do other coups stack up?

Honduras suffered a coup in June 2009, just 3 months after Ravolomanana stepped down. I've graphed activity for Honduras and Madagascar in 2009 on the same chart so that we can see the relative intensity of the coverage.

All of a sudden, that huge spike on March 17 looks like a speed bump next to the Honduran Himalayas. This makes sense. To get to Madagascar from the east coast of the United States, you need 19 hours and $5000. And there are probably more American expats in Honduras and Honduran expats in America than is the case for Madagascar. You can't report what you don't see.

But come on - there were more articles written in Romanian than in English about the crisis in Madagascar. Romanian! I don't even want to think what that would look like in terms of articles per fluent capita!

Certainly, there's a lot this data can't account for. (Was the coup in Honduras more unexpected and sensational? Is there a disparity of the level of access to telecommunications in the two countries? What effect did World Cup qualifiers have on the traffic?) But I can't help but wonder if there's a certain amount of negligent laziness that determines the news we see and the news we don't. What do you think? And seriously, what's the deal with the Romanians?

“We can break the rules like nothing will last.

You might forget the sound of a voice,

Still you should not forget the things that we laughed about.”

-LCD Soundsystem

“Friendship sucks.”

-Dugukolo Coulibaly

Goodbyes are never easy, and this was no exception. I cried. Everyone cried. And in Mali, crying is intolerable, so we all had to tell each other how badly we were behaving. I’ll miss N’gabakoro deeply. And that’s all I have to say about that.

It had been a bad week. I’d just recovered from another bout of diarrhea. This one even made the Peace Corps doctor say ‘ew’ when I described my symptoms to her over the phone. Maybe the poor lady was eating breakfast or something; I never think of these things in time.

After dinner, Bafing, Na, Bablé and I were sitting around the after dinner fire. I was feeling pretty spiffy, first for the renewed control of my bowels (I can poop and fart… separately?! Great!) and second because I was sporting the new shuka wrap that Tara had given to me in Tanzania. The season had turned colder, but it was still a fur piece from being cold. The plaid blanket wrap gained a lot of attention – not for it’s clever pattern, exotic origin, or culturally accurate drape, but for the simple fact I was wearing it. “Madou,” they’d ask, each in turn, “are you…cold?”

Now, as a native of Michigan – an Arborigine goddammit! – and a part-time Yooper, it’s my birthright to deny, or at least impugn the existence of cold anywhere else on the planet, particularly in the bloody tropics. I’d already gone to great lengths to explicate the differences between their cold and our cold:

Little pieces of ice fall from the sky and pile up on the ground until people get lost in it! We put metal ropes on our car tires that bite the ice so we can go places. Some people don’t have houses and burn garbage to stay warm. And, when the river freezes, some crazy people build small houses on the ice, drill holes in it and wait for stupid fish to jump out of the cold water below!

So, “No,” Madou lies, “I already told you, cold doesn’t exist in Mali. I just like my blanket.”

This precipitates a conversation that reveals one of the most perplexing misconceptions about America I’ve yet had to face. Are you ready?

Mali’s cold is bad. America's cold is good.

By this point I’ve already talked down the ideas that America is rich because she prints all of the world’s money, that Mali can’t manufacture airplanes because America won’t teach her, that Michael Jackson took medicine to turn white because he didn’t like being black, or that George W. Bush personally executed Saddam Hussein. But this one left me speechless. I asked Bafing what he means. He said that no matter how bad it is outside, the cold doesn’t get in our houses. He said that we don’t have dust storms that make people sick. By the time we’re done, I’ve privately admitted to myself that even our friends in the economically challenged Upper Peninsula have it pretty good. But I’ve made little to no headway conveying the hardships faced by snowbound Americans. Part of this is due to my linguistic shortcomings. My anecdote about Hugo Chavez donating heating oil to the northeast was especially confused.

But I also begin to understand the ridiculous barriers our government puts in place to limit immigration to the educated elite. At least their dreams of America are fairly grounded in reality. I’ve tried to explain how things really are. I told them that opportunities exist, but they’re not distributed evenly. That poverty, disease, xenophobia and racism are all still pretty major problems in America and even if they did make it to America someday, they’d still have a hard go of it. But every time, they’ve flatly denied it. It’d be like if you told a group of children that the Easter Bunny isn’t real, only to have them snap back in unison, “Don’t be silly, of course he does. You’ll see.”

You start to ask yourself, what is it they know???

I wonder. This spring I’ll get my 3rd chance to explain the American Easter tradition. Given that “pretend” or “make-believe” aren’t in my vocabulary, what do you suppose it will do to their vision of Paradise? I can see it now. Madou said that in America they have giant bunnies. And that every year, they sneak into your house and hide colorful chocolate-filled eggs in every corner because… what did Madou say? Jesus died for us sinners? Amen and hallelujah! I suppose Americans, too, are capable of some pretty stunning self-deception.

Bafing and I were neck deep in the Chavez debacle when it happened. Out of the darkness, a man rolled up on a bicycle. At first glance he was a dead ringer for a WWI pilot, except his bomber jacket was nylon and his aviator’s cap was actually a disembodied hood from some other jacket, with the drawstring fastened under his chin. The rest was pretty spot-on – from the scarf foppishly tossed over one shoulder right down to his knickers that were ballooning out of pointed leather boots. For extra flair, he’s got an 8-inch knife sheathed around his waist, a shotgun on his back and what appears to be a headlight stripped from a car and strapped around his forehead. After the perfunctory greetings, he asked if anyone had an axe. Without a word, Bablé fetched one from inside the house. The pilot held the axe in front of him, looking at it approvingly, yes, this will do. Then he un-mounted the blade, returned the handle, and disappeared into the night.

What struck me as odd about this is that nothing at all about this struck me as odd.

My point being, whether it’s the hot weather, the improbable loads carried on the backs of bicycles or the heads of women, or the perfectly bizarre creature that is The Donkey, I’m getting used to life here. I guess it’s part of Peace Corps’ “integration” philosophy (big asterisk there. I’ll toss you that hot potato later…) Regrettably, it makes it harder to recognize the unrelatable moments; and sharing the things I’ve made sense of seems less urgent. So sorry for that. And sorry again for when I come back and laugh at all the wonderfully absurd things we do.

Birdbaths… bwaaa ha ha ha ha!

Written July 15

Pandemonium!!

It’s a like a Wall St. fire drill. Shoving, shouting, and a powerful tide of people running and brushing past from every direction. Peace Corps had warned us not to come here. I’m constantly rubbernecking to keep track of the other volunteers and scanning the crowd as we try to cut across the undertow, but Peace Corps’s advice is kept far from my mind. I’m too busy looking for what everyone is after– a cool drink of water.

It’s halftime at the Mali-Ghana soccer match, and we’re circling the concourse outside the stadium. The sun went down around the twenthy-fifth minute, but the pre-game hours of line standing and seat saving has left me, and 30,000 of my closest friends, a bit parched.

I can say with some confidence that these entirely non-threatening skirmishes were not what PC had in mind when they questioned the wisdom of going to a World Cup qualifier in West Africa; especially when the visitors are heavily favored to win. Indeed, just last year several people got trampled at the very same stadium, and that was just an Alpha Blondy concert.

But here, all has been law and order. The pre-game traffic wasn’t any heavier than you might expect in the states; but the fast and loose (literally) traffic and passenger safety regulations meant hundreds of pick-up trucks and vans with dozens of people spilling out of the bed and clutching on to ‘post-market’ and ‘user-installed’ oh-shit bars. Impressive, too, was the line outside the stadium. Lacking any snaking corrals to keep the line compact and single file, a tight conga line coiled around the stadium. Police enforced no-go zones by blindly twirling clubs as they paced up and down either side of the line. Cutters were quickly corrected. One, two, one-two, kick!

Even the current brouhaha isn’t all tooth and claw greed. My friends wave me to the outside wall of the concourse overlooking the property behind the stadium. Then I see them – thousands of men, shoeless and prostrate in prayer. Whatever residual tension downshifts two gears. My friends and I won’t have to Houdini out of potentially thousands of handshake manacles and suffocating vapor clouds of ethanol - every Muslim in sight is sober. Though, they still raced into the bathrooms, rolled up their pant legs and crowded the taps for the ablutions. Allah waits for no conga line.

A man brushes past, his arms full of the coveted polyethylene pouches of water. The American in me immediately thinks scalper! and I chase after him. When I ask him if he’s selling, he smiles, shakes his head and in an archetype of Malian patience, tries to push one into my hand.

In Mali, it’s impolite to refuse a gift, something I tend to forget. One morning in Koulikoro, the capital of my region, I’d walked downtown to get breakfast from the best meat & egg sandwich stand in Mali. The woman makes this onion sauce that is at in the short term an aphrodisiac for anorexics and in the longer term a guarantor of abstinence.

On the way, I practiced an obligatory gesture I learned in Madagascar but perfected in Mali – greeting. It usually goes something like this:

Good morning! How’d you sleep? How are you? How’s your family? My name? Madou Coulibaly.

From here, it can go one of two ways. If they, like me, are a Coulibaly, we wish each other a nice day and I’m on my way. Any other last name, I’m told in the warmest tones and with the heartiest of handshakes that I am an uncircumcised slave donkey who farts a lot, or some permutation thereof. It’s a complicated relationship.

Cradling the warm sandwich like a football – to keep any onion sauce from escaping the baguette, I made my way home. One of the not-Coulibalys I identified earlier hollered from across the street. Where are you going with that? Coulibalys are too poor for anything but beans! Give it here. Feeling a little insult fatigue, I decided to call her bluff. With my confusion mirrored in her face, she took the sandwich.

Back at the game, with a well-practiced smile of resigned gratitude, I take the water.

Mali did lose, 2-0, but this is as lively as things would get for us. Granted, we left after the second goal, and even then we had to battle our way through congested streets with no public transport in sight. We had the good fortune of being picked up by a Malian couple driving an SUV paid for in diamonds. “No need to thank us,” the woman said. “Somewhere in America, I’m sure someone is doing the same for a Malian.” My mind ran through the particulars of a wealthy American couple picking up five West Africans from the streets of DC in the dark of night, and I briefly considered contending her assertion. Thankfully, a combination of inadequate Bambara and nearly adequate judgment kept my tongue in check. It’s easier to return the favor from here anyhow.

But did it have to be the sandwich?

Written March 2, 2009

I’ll admit, I flipped the switch too early. Sometime during that bumpy, dusty, overnight truck ride, my imagination betrayed me.

Under normal conditions, it takes 11 hours to get from Fianar from Ikongo. That night it took 16, so I had plenty of time to explore all the implications of the inevitable hypothesis of what if this is goodbye? By the time we got to Fianar, I’d worked out so many contingencies, wrapped my head so tightly around the idea of evacuation that I forgot to leave room for any other eventuality.

And who can blame me? Who doesn’t want that narrative? I, a worker for peace, had to be dragged across a tarmac and into a plane while the country self-destructed around me! Who doesn’t want to step out of Reagan National Airport in the middle of February shod in flip flops, unshaven and jacketless because… well, dammit, that’s all the time there was!

So, you understand, during those three weeks of excruciating uncertainty and mind-rattling ambiguity, my stomach tweaked itself a notch tighter every time it looked like my life might not be as exciting as I had imagined. Going back to my village of Ambolomadinika became inconceivable.

I was afraid it’d be weird. That things would be intrinsicially different now that the fragile nature of the relationships I’d built had been laid bare. Afraid that they’d resent me for being a needle drop away (get it? Because Andry is a former disc j—ah, forget it) from writing the whole thing off as an aborted vacation. Afraid that all my half-baked projects would fall apart. They probably will anyhow, but this at least would have given me a scapegoat.

But here’s the punchline, O Patient Reader: Nothing has changed. If anything, things have gotten better. I feel much less obligated to put up with people who only see me as a walking sack of money. Mind you, there are still annoyances. The madness caused by too much time in your head, the stark differences in expectations, the day to day cultural subtleties I’m sure to never truly grasp. They’re all still there. But these annoyances are part of a routine deep enough to swim in and solid enough to stand on. They are family.

Like too many of us, I’ve been to the edge of life-altering moments before and experienced the pre-emptive (perhaps artificial?) hindsight that refocuses and revitalizes the old reality. It’s happened often enough that I reluctantly acknowledge that this new frame of reference will relax into the old. The head time, expectations and culture will likely prevail, and soon enough I’ll be back to staining the pages of my journal blue with ball-point fury. At least until experience and time bring genuine hindsight. The principle behind every Peace Corps service is the hope that this happens before you become an RPCV.

I found this in one of the notebooks I packed out of Madagascar. I wrote it the interim between consolidation and evacuation. I'd intended to upload it during my next trip to Fianar.

[Written 14th May, 2009.]

First, the bad news. Peace Corps has suspended their program in Madagascar. As a result, my service there has come to an end. In Peace Corps' official jargon, I completed my service, but really there's very little about it that feels complete. If you really want a sense of this, I direct you to blog posts by friends and other volunteers. For now, I'd rather focus on the more practical consequences for you, the hypothetical reader of this blog.

First, I can no longer punt the responsibility of regular updates to other volunteers via the group blog, so I'll be posting here for the time being. Second, I've moved to Mali to continue my peace corps experience. Again, "continue" seems like the wrong word, since I'll be starting over in a new country, new climate, new culture and new language. Certain adjustments have been easier to re-do, others have brought unexpected surprises. We'll explore that cubist Venn diagram in due time.

But before we move on to Mali, I need to make one last plug for Madagascar. I need to point out that though the gunshots have quieted and news coverage has thinned out (was it ever thick?) the political crisis isn't over. Recently, USAID has told the non-profits it funds to discontinue their work with any government agencies. These include institutions like schools, community health centers and local mayors - often key stakeholders that help development projects reach the rural poor.

Let's be clear about something. Life in rural Madagascar doesn't change much from day-to-day, much less president-to-president. In fact, it sucks rather consistently. Additionally, the national government is pretty low on the list of organizations with the capacity to change that. So it pains me when the international community tries to punish an illegitimate government but ends up hurting the people who are largely (and rightly, mind you!) indifferent to that government.

I don't blame USAID or other international organizations like the African Union or SADC for taking these types of actions. It's important to send signals that make it clear that military coups are unacceptable and they also have limited means to do so.

But these NGO's must continue to function and operate, with or without international funding. For example, the NGO I worked with, Ny Tanintsika, continues to build capacity and supports rural villages as they become communities that can help themselves. It's supported by a razor-sharp Malagasy staff and coordinated by a British woman who has lived in the country for 10 years and shows no sign of leaving. If you are so inclined, their donations page is a great way to keep the Malagasy government irrelevant in all the right ways.

We finally got the group blog rolling, so I'm going to be posting to that from now on. The idea is that it will be updated less erratically than this blog, and also provide a wider range of experiences from a very diverse country. See you there!

We've now left our community-based training, and are tying up a few loose ends in the capital before heading out to our respective sites.

I can't say much other than the experience has so far been wonderful. I had a great host family and our training class is full of incredible people. I will have more to say about my site in the near future, and Peace Corps forbids I mention it by name, but it's also very fascinating. Stereotypically remote, it takes 3 days of travel from the capitalm by bush taxi and train - before I get to the 12km hike/bike (interrupted halfway by a short canoe ride) to my village.

The other news is I'll be delivering a speech in Malagasy on behalf of our class at the swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday. The Malagasy culture requires 2/3 of your speech be devoted to appologizing to the audience for speaking in front of them. Luckily, my language instructor helped me litter it with amusing proverbs to keep it interesting. Among them, "Let us not be like the wild boar who, when he visits his father-in-law, is pointed at by his host's lips and then carries his head on his shoulders. Instead, let us be like the little red bird, who whistles at the big brown bird when he visits, and the host sings in turn." The audience in this case, unfortunately, is anyone who happens to be tuned into the Malagasy equivalent of NPR or C-Span. Not a huge deal, but really? Lip pointing? We'll see how it goes over...

But to paraphrase another Malagasy proverb - if the grass is long, the pig is lost and if the blog post is long, the point is lost.

Miss you all!

Boy, this is awkward.

I have no right to be here, and I know that. I left so suddenly. I didn't even leave a note explaining why I had to leave or where I was going.

But you know I'm no good at apologies, so I'll just skip it if that's alright with you.

Anyways, I'm sorry I left. Just give me another shot. It'll be just like old times.

Well, it might be a little different.

These artists seem to be pursuing wealth and fame using the business model pioneered by Alex Tew at the million dollar homepage.

First, there's onethousandpaintings.com, where Swiss artist Sala is selling "unique" paintings of every integer (not number, as she says. I have to nitpick) from 1 to 1000. She calls them unique because each is a different number and she doesn't make copies. I put it in quotes because each uses the same font/color scheme. In her words:

One number, one painting - the number is the art is the limit is the price. Each of the one thousand paintings is unique, showing a number between 1 and 1000. This is an experiment of art and mathematics, on the web, the first of its kind.

The value of each painting is defined by its number (value = 1000 - number). The earlier you buy, the more you save. She later mentions the minimum price is $40, plus $20-30 shipping.

Next up, via a link on her own site, is theblackcubes.com which is slightly more pretentious. Again, from the site:

I'm making 999 wooden black cubes. Every cube has the same shape, appearence and dimensions (every facet is 20 cm.). The strange thing is that there is something inside the cube!. But nobody can take possession of its real sense, because if the cube is opened this sense is lost irreparably. The cube is the material representation of human curiosity.

[...]

There is a reason for the number of the cubes, 999. If i sell a good number you will know itWhat is it inside the cubes? I can only say that there is something different for every cube, that make your cube unique; You can't get its sense if the cube is opened (that means breaking it). Every cube is a part of an unique projectDON'T OPEN IT!!Something else will happen to my project some day (when i have sold all cubes)

The price of the cubes is determined by the number of sold cubes; every cube sold the price will increase of 0.50 USD. If you buy now you save your money!

The current price is $85.50 USD.

In both of these cases, no matter how lofty their rhetoric, their greed gets in the way of the message they're supposedly conveying. In the first case, it's obvious that the number is the art is the limit, but is not the price. The $40 minimum interferes with the idea. Not to mention she's trying to buy back popular numbers and sell them again at a profit.

I'm less clear about the black cubes. I feel that their increasing value over time conflicts with my idea of "human curiosity." I don't see how uncertainty adds value to itself over time.I suppose if I buy a pack of baseball cards in 1989 and don't open it, I will be able to sell it at a higher price today. But in that case, it's what the pack contains that gives it value, not the curiosity of the owner. Yes, those 20 cards would be worth less if not in a factory sealed pack. But consider this. If you burgled a house and found a sealed envelope with "20 mint-condition 1989 baseball cards" written on the outside. Would you be able to sell this for more or less money than the sealed pack? Decidedly not. Which would you be more likely to tear open? Probably the envelope. To me, this says that the extra information implied by factory sealed package (they are baseball cards, they are from 1989, they are more likely in mint condition) increases the price. In other words, more information, higher price, but less curiosity.

I guess I can go on as long as I want about hype, artificial demand and over-priced, pretentious art, but they're selling Why does seem that collective action never works the way I want it to?

All kinds of good news. The graft went on as scheduled, and now all I have to do is get myself healed. I have extra incentive now, as I found out I got accepted by Michigan Tech to start January 15th. So I'll have a lot to do between now and then. Needless to say, worrying about packing, finding an apartment, or registering classes now seems like a luxury. What's more, the doctor said my prognosis was excellent and that the chances of the cancer recurring are very slight and he'd personally make certain the Peace Corps understands exactly that. So it's just up to me to make sure the second interview goes well. Five weeks ago, my plans seemed to be falling through. Lucky for me, they managed to fall right into place.

The path report came back, and all the margins were clear. They did find a pre-cancerous lesion in the scar tissue, but they took enough skin to be sure it won't spread any time soon. The skin graft surgery is scheduled for Wednesday of next week, which is sweet, because that means I can stop watering the plastic covering over the hole in my foot every two hours.

On that note, I was kinda curious about the covering and learned a little bit more about it on the glorious internet. From the FDA (italics mine):

What is it? INTEGRA® Dermal Regeneration Template is a device to treat the skin of people with severe burns. FDA has recently expanded the approved use of this device. I INTEGRA® may now be used to treat the often disabling scars that result from severe burns. INTEGRA® has two layers. The bottom layer (dermal) is made of a fibrous protein material (collagen) from cows and a substance made from shark cartilage. The top layer (epidermal) is made of silicone How does it work? When INTEGRA® is placed on a wound where the burned skin or scarred tissue has been removed, it allows blood vessels and other cells to grow a new layer of skin while the collagen is absorbed into the body. The silicone layer helps close the wound and prevent fluid loss. After approximately 14 to 21 days, the silicone layer is removed, and a very thin graft of the patient's own skin (autograft) is applied to the wound area.

So basically I'm now part shark. And I'm cool with that. What I'm not cool with is why my doctor wouldn't tell that to me, a 23 year old male, outright. Why should I have to dig around on the internet before I can tell people I'm some kind of shark mutant? I mean, I've only wanted to be able to say that ever since I was six years old...

Among the things my macbook can't do is watch adultswim cartoons on the Fix. See, when I follow that link, I get this:

Whoa, whoa there buddy. Where do you think you're going?

Not with that Mac you're not. The Fix, she don't like Macs.

But we're sweet talking her. Wining and dining her.

Sending appropriately casual yet suggestive IM's. Things will change.

Until then, here's a weekly mini-Fix.

Those chumps with PCs have to sift through all the other crap to find this gem.

While I appreciate their sensitivity to my needs, the mini-Fix does not do the job. Lucky for me, I think I have found a replacement. Meet Channel Frederator. They're the folks who brought you Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, etc. Now they've got a weekly webcast of user-submitted animated shorts, complete with snarky bumps between episodes. The fact that it is user-submitted means the occasional short can disappoint, but the huge variety of styles and ideas is more often rewarding than annoying. Plus, each week they let the viewers vote on which shorts they liked most, so they can improve their selections in the future.

What I like most of this is that submitting doesn't require agreeing to a verbose license agreement or forfeiting your rights to your work. I'm no lawyer, but the "fine print" seems clear and concise enough for me to understand it:

By submitting this form you agree that this cartoon is your work, you have permission from everyone who worked on the cartoon to submit it, you have composed all the music yourself or have permission to use it, the whole cartoon is original, and you're over 18 years old or have a parent's permission to submit this cartoon. You will retain complete ownership of your work and we will not use your film in any other way without your expressed permission.

Because we want to pack as many cartoons as we can into each episode, Channel Frederator may have to edit or delete your film's credits if we feel they go on way too long. Don't worry, we'll still list them on our Website.

It's a lot of fun, and definitely worth checking out the next time you have 15 minutes.

Musicovery is a really cool website that lets you shuffle songs you don't even own by mood. You can use it like a regular internet radio station, or you can fast forward through the playlist (as indicated by the grey line), or you can select any number of parameters to play the exact music you're in the mood for. These parameters include tempo, mood, genre, popularity and decade. You can include a combination of these to create quite a nice mix without even thinking about it. Perfect for when you're bored of your own music, but don't want to be subject to the whims of some radio DJ or sit fast forwarding through your own collection on shuffle until something acceptable comes up. Getting a CD quality stream costs a little over 2 bucks a month, which seems pretty reasonable. That said, I'm pretty content with the free 32kbs stream.

IV... I had one of those this morning.

The surgery went well. The doctor didn't see any immediate sign of a tumor and the lymph node looked normal, which is pretty amazing. We still have to wait on the path report to be sure they got all the cancer cells. But all in all, the best possible news.

I'm still kinda groggy from the anesthesia, and on a heavy dose of painkiller, so I'm going to wait to post more until later.

Not much new information, but I told people I'd post. The oncologists on the tumor board were amazed that the tests were negative and suggested I buy a lottery ticket. There was some debate about the benefits of taking a lymph node. The surgeon thinks it would be a good prognostic tool, and I'd feel better with the peace of mind. Surgery goes forward this Wednesday as planned.

I did it. I finally took the plunge. I bought a mac.

One by one, my fears and hesitations eroded until all that was stopping me was the price tag. Then I found the refurbished laptops on Apple's website. They're almost affordable by even Dell standards. It doesn't have the exact specs I wanted, but it's still a nice piece of iCandy. The FedEx tracker says it gets here on the 15th.

Also, I got a call from the Chicago Peace Corps office, and they can't schedule the second interview until Michigan Tech gives me a thumbs up or down. I'm getting really good at waiting for stuff to happen. Mr. Rogers would be proud.

So the plan is to go on with, well... the plan. They're still going to take a big ol' slab of skin, a lymph node and maybe a tendon or two. They'll look at all of it really carefully and . I'll deal with the 'if not' if 'if not' happens. Regardless, I'll probably go into a short period of hiding while the skin graft takes.

Dude, it's sixty degrees outside.

"Am I a clown to you? Do I amuse you?"

I've always hated pigeons. For me they rank with the cockroach and rat as symbols of urban filth. But listening to the Diane Rehm show this morning, I heard her guest mention attending a Pigeon Beauty contest in Lancaster, PA. Hearing his descriptions of some of the breeds, I had to see pictures of these beasts. I wasn't disappointed. This site has a nice gallery of some truely remarkable squab. Apparently, the American Fantail has a neck so long it curls its head around and rests it on its tail. Here are some of my favorites:

I've been reluctant to post about this for a variety of reasons, and one of those reasons was realized this morning. But given that recent development, I think now is the time to unravel this twisted tale and share with everyone what I've been going through the past ten days. So, follow along and enjoy the ride, knowing that a freeze frame and sappy music awaits you at the end of the episode.

Three years ago, I saw a number of doctors about a lump on my foot that had been growing over the past five years. No one seemed to know what it was, and finally a vascular surgeon agreed to take it out and perform a biopsy. We heard back that it was a dead lymph node and nothing to be worried about.

Flash forward to this October. I've been keeping an eye on the scar tissue where the lump had been removed, and I think it might be getting bigger. Since I want to ensure a clean bill of health for the Peace Corps, I decide to have it checked out and schedule an appointment with the clinic who had taken it out before.

The evening of the last Sunday in October I get a phone call from the head of vascular surgery. He's on the road and the reception made it difficult to hear, but the message is unmistakable. They've known I've had cancer for the past three years, but no one had bothered to tell me. Also, the doctor who had seen me has moved on, so it will take a while to figure out what happened. He says they are looking into it, but I would have to wait until Thursday to know more. So much for my clean bill of health.

The four days of considerable anxiety happen to include my peace corps interview. I don't mention it.

At the appointment on Thursday, I find out at least three mistakes were made. (1) Lymph nodes aren't located anywhere below the knee, so whatever they pulled out wasn't a lymph node. (2) An appointment was never made to tell me the pathologist #1 thought I had melanoma. (3) Pathologist #2 looks at the slides this week and says it isn't melanoma, but a rare form of cancer called clear cell sarcoma. Do yourself a favor and don't google that.

The doc also says that from the looks of it, it is a very 'indolent' tumor (that's my kind of tumor!) and that decreases the chances that it has spread. However, if it has spread, it probably would go to the lungs. They need an MRI, CT scan, bloodwork and chest x-rays before they know anything further. The tentative plan would be to take a swath of skin and 4 tendons off the top of my foot, and maybe a (real) lymph node or two out of my thigh to see if it spread. This would happen the day before Thanksgiving.

The hospital called in their risk management people to get a feel for how pissed I was that they knew I had cancer for three years and didn't tell me. I won't go into details, but they are picking up the bill for all the pre-op care, as well as anything that the insurance doesn't cover after that.

All the tests are performed that day, including the MRI. (Thank you risk management!) The closest available x-ray machine is in the plastic surgery ward. The nurses there say, "Gee, no one in plastic surgery gets their chest x-rayed. You must be pretty special!" I don't know what to say, so I say nothing.

They send us home, for another week of waiting and hoping. My doc has to consult the cancer board, which meets every Wednesday, with my test results before they know anything further.

I spend a lot of time with my family, call my sister to break the news. She and her fiance make plans to drive up before the surgery and spend time with us. To deal with stress, I go for a lot of long bike rides. It helps me feel normal and healthy. I deliberate day and night if I should tell anyone else, and how, and in what order. I don't. My reasons:

I want to feel as normal as possible for as long as possible.I don't want it to be an excuse.It's better to give you guys a book report than to write you into the novel.

It could be a huge mistake. They've already made three, remember.

Ready for the freeze frame yet?

The doc called me this morning with my test results. X-rays: clear. CT scan: clear. Blood work: A-OK. Nothing even showed up on my foot from the MRI. I like to think that the lungs spread to the foot, rather than vice versa.

They still might want to take the lymph node, just as a further diagnostic. Given the test results, they gave a higher priority case my time at the tumor board, so it'll be a couple weeks before we get the whole story. I'll know a little more tomorrow, and a lot more by next Thursday. Things are looking up.

I'm going to go ride my bike now.

Doing yardwork...

Brendan: Dad, check it out. Looks like Zoey got into some Halloween candy. Grosss, is that a 'mounds' wrapper?

Dad: Is it? Looks more like Reese's Feces to me.

I should mention I've taken my next steps to getting out of Ann Arbor. I applied to Michigan Tech's Master's International program. It's simple. 1 year coursework + 2 years Peace Corps service = masters in civil engineering. Pie, no? The past few weeks have been busy making sure all the paperwork is in. Recommendations, fingerprints, background checks, letter of intent &c. It hasn't been fun. My interview with the Peace Corps last Wednesday went well enough, and there should be a second interview over the phone with the office in Chicago sometime soon. If that goes well, all I have to do is clear medical and legal checks and I can be nominated. Meanwhile my MTU application is in committee, so I should hear about that in a couple of weeks. It's nice to be in a place where the most I can do is cross my fingers.

I'm pretty excited. I visited MTU at the end of the Summer on the way back from a wedding in Wisconsin, and the campus defied my expectations. The kids in the program seem to be a tight-knit group and have a lot of fun together. So it was good to see that it isn't just a bunch of nerds staying inside and playing Counterstrike. I don't even think it will be too hard to find some folks to help me test out a little winter camping. Not to mention the coursework sounds exciting, and the Peace Corps is something I'd probably want to do anyway.

Plus, I don't know what the hell I'd do if I didn't get in.

NPR's Science Friday did a piece [mp3] with Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) on the closure of the Environmental Protection Agency's library system that went into effect this afternoon. Here's the gist from the PEER website:

These libraries and their staff provide essential services to EPA staff and to the general public, such as finding the most current information on health risks of chemical substances, providing documentation in enforcement cases against corporate polluters, and helping to prepare scientific support for new regulations. Shuttering the EPA libraries means that: Tens of thousands of unique holdings will be boxed up and inaccessible for an unknown period;Public access to EPA holdings will cease; andEPA scientists, enforcement agents and other specialists will have a much harder time doing their jobs. See EPA scientists’ letter of protest to Congress. While cloaked as a budgetary measure, the actual motives appear to be rooted more in controlling access by both EPA staff and the public to information. (An internal EPA study estimated that the library network saved approximately $7.5 million annually in professional staff time, an amount far larger than the agency library budget of $2.5 million.) I want to highlight that this is irreversible. It is not a matter of cracking open the sealed archives and digitizing them. The library in Chicago has already started to find new homes for many of their documents. Also, FOIA requests will not be effective since these records have not been catalogued. If you can't name the document, you can't request it.

Also, this is NOT about balancing the budget and finding a responsible way for paying for our dabblings in offensive warfare. It is not even an effective way to achieve a "small government." The library program IS small ($2.5 million isn't even a rounding error compared to the proposed $350 billion non-military discretionary spending) and it is not "government waste." It's what keeps the Agency running. In fact, removing the program will likely cause the $7.3 billion spent annually by the Agency to get tied up in paperwork and data mining. And THAT is wasteful.

I've stopped seeing stars when I stand up to fast. Must be election season. Call your Congressman.

Foreign Policy Magazine has a stunning photo essay about the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh. About half of the worlds super tankers are disassembled there, the others mostly go to China or India. The methods and work conditions are almost medieval. From the essay:

When the tide is high, vessels are driven at full speed toward the shore. Once the water recedes and the ships rest along the muddy beach, the salvage crews move in, emptying the vessels of everything on board.

The OSHA factsheet [PDF] on shipbreaking includes a who's who of toxic chemicals including PCBs, lead and other heavy metals, asbestos and CFCs. Not to mention all the sharp metal, broken glass and fire-prone liquids aplenty. The US has workplace standards to protect its citizens from these hazards. The laws of economics see to it they are protected from doing the work at all. Bangladesh has few or no standards, which is why you see 200,000 people in bare feet and no protective equipment. Bangladesh also has lax environmental regulations, so when the tide comes in, all those chemicals get washed right into the Bay of Bengal.

The magazine isn't the first to cover this story. Will Englund and Gary Cohn were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their 1998 piece in the Baltimore Sun on Alang shipyard [google satellite image] in India, and Greenpeace (yes, they're still around) has declared it one of their priorities. So I'm a little surprised I hadn't heard more about it.

My friend Annick has been working hard as producer for a documentary about Clare Woods Academy, a school for kids with special needs. From the website:

The film chronicles the amazing kids, with various disabilities, through rehearsals, classroom time, their home lives, and finally, the sold -out, standing-room-only performances of the musical. The film aims to show that despite outward appearances or physical differences, these special kids are just like any other child, with the same hopes, dreams, and fears.She just posted an announcement that the rough cut has just been finished and the real thing shouldn't be too far behind. The trailer is wonderful (I found the quicktime file to work better for me), and the whole project oozes with a professionalism that just awes me. But as LeVar would say, take my damn word for it and make a donation.

My dad never ceases to amaze me with his ability to be trendy at least a decade too early. He was making himself "western-style" shirts back in the late 80s. He developed a predecessor to GIS for Wayne county way before it became an important land-use planning tool. To be fair, he has his share of things that never caught on. Before I was born, he started a croquet league that played during the lunch hour - in 1970's downtown Detroit. This time, though, he's caught something just before it reaches its tipping point.

Every August, the kitchen becomes inundated with tomatoes of all shapes, colors, and states of decay. By the second week, my tongue is raw and my sense of taste diminished. I start to wonder if the same happens to the fruit flies which have by then fortified a perimeter around the kitchen table.

This year, our troubles were alleviated when People's Food Co-op in Ann Arbor agreed to sell his tomatoes - at $5.69 a pound. The PFC was already carrying his heirloom vegetable seeds, which were profiled in a Michigan Radio piece in May last year. I'll work on posting the audio file later. Michigan Radio doesn't have a very friendly archive. Meanwhile, you can listen to a higher-profile bit [transcript. Scroll up for the mp3.] on heirloom tomatoes that aired on NPR's Living on Earth just a few weeks ago.

As I was searching for the segment, a bit of fill music caught my ear. It was Wendy Mae Chambers' car horn organ playing "New York, New York"

The instrument is comprised of 25 car horns operated by a homemade keyboard and powered by a car battery charger. The car horns were selected with a pitch pipe and purchased from junk yards, with the exception of the Cadillac C-Trumpet and the "ahooogah" horn which were purchased new... She believes she got the idea for the instrument while asleep in her apartment in Brooklyn, waking up to a distant traffic jam on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway that sounded like a Mahler symphony.

Bonus points for the apt Mahler similie. She also has a quite charming version of "Winter wonderland" that she plays on her toy piano. John Cage would be proud.

Speaking of Cage, youtube has his "Sound" posted in three parts. If you can tolerate Cage's urgent and self-important blatherskite, it's worth a look to see why I like Roland Kirk so much. Kinda like my blog. Was that too self-aware? C'mon, you like it when Eggers does it!

Kirk and Cage

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Even though same-sex marriage is rapidly losing ground, it has still cast its morally ambiguous shadow over the institution as a whole. Opponents of same-sex marriage often suggest that allowing such unions could pave the way for even less desirable nuptials such as intra-family and inter-species wedlock. Indeed, two liberal eurotrash fowls have proven them right. I must admit, what worries me more is high school english classes having to deal with five more chuck dickens. Groan again, into my good ear?

Graham stood me up. For real this time. I've been hunting for jobs for a while now, and I realize that 19 times in 20, people will not return calls or emails. But, as Mandira pointed out, it's just unprofessional to miss a set appointment. I have contacted him since, he has apologized and we have less than concrete plans to talk in the future. Maybe I'm being hasty, but I don't think I'll be tuning in to KBBL anytime soon.

Meanwhile, I made the mistake of renting a DVD of '24' from the library. I'd never seen an episode, assuming it was just Tom Clancy TV and that I had better things to do. Well, it is and I do. But I haven't been looking at other options for my future, thinking about my research, or thrilling you with updates in favor of watching it.

I've started looking at grad schools again. I originally favored practical experience, thinking it would lead me to an area of interest, thus avoiding working toward an advanced degree in another field I didn't like. But after some time in the woods and a bit of research, I think I am zeroing in on some areas of interest. I can't get the jobs I want when the degree I don't like is the first thing on my resume. Thanks, Yoda.

I've been finding a lot of sites where people are "ripping" their old out of print LPs to mp3 and sharing them online. Most of these are novelty items that are fairly safe from any applicable copyright interests. For instance, Bellybongo specializes in lounge music and Swedish pop. Sabadabada offers a small selection of Brasilian music from the 1960's, and a large collection of album art from the same era. Unpleasant.org is a better music blog than I could ever write, and dabbles in a little sharity. Singing science records has a bunch of those campy (albeit catchy!) let's-make-science-fun songs. Funky16corners posts funk tracks and albums of varying obscurity.

Some of my favorites:

'Summertime' by Klaus Wunderlich has got the funk. I really want someone to mash this up with a thicker drum track.'Y Deja Andar El Reloj' byOsmar Milito Y El Quarteto Forma is a laid back tune featuring the cuica. My family named our first dog after it because of the noise it made locked in the bathroom at night before it was housetrained. While you're on the page check out 'Magnolia' by Jorge Ben. Fans of Seu Jorge's contributions to the Life Aquatic soundtrack should like this. Also, Side A of Obofe is also a gem. One minute it sounds like Sergio Mendes and the Brasil '66, the next minute like the Sesame Street theme. 'Madame Sabe Tudo' sounds like a Brasilian Bob Dylan over a Dixieland jazz band.

'Kiedy Allach Szedl (When Allah came)' by Marek Sewen and his band. The whistling (or theramin?) and woodblock remind me of Ennio Morricone's work on the spaghetti Western soundtracks. I guess Allah came by for tea and an afternoon cha-cha.

The Very Best of Robert Delgado. It is mandatory that you enjoy a drink with a miniature umbrella in it while listening to this album at least once this summer. Let me know if you can't figure out how to get the rapidshare thing to work.'Sheherezade' as done by Trumpet A'gogo reminds me more of 'One Nation' off of Roland Kirk's Blacknuss more than Rimsky-Korsakov.

Lastly, if you don't have enough to do with your life, check out 'Zoom a Little Zoom' over at Singing Science. As the page notes, it features the guy who penned "On top of Spaghetti". The harmonies warm me from the inside. That's all for now. If I know me at all, there will be more. Thank you for indulging me.

By someone else. Seeing my old roommate Nic record his own music often made me fantasize about writing/recording a multi-violin piece. But never did I even consider doing something on as grand a scale as this. And putting it together on video? Forget it! Enjoy.

9:17pm - I had the video embedded here, but I guess you'll have to go through google instead.

Also, here is Ethan's own website.